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The What NOW Caper
The What NOW Caper is a sixty-minute pseudo-documentary produced and sold by NOW Comics in 1989 showing how comic books are made. It is not a straight documentary as there is storyline involving private investigator Mel Mudd and his search for the missing NOW Comics characters. This "movie" was released on VHS and Betmax home video exclusively by NOW (it was not sold in stores) for the price of $29.95. Advertisements were published in all of NOW's comics at the time, and it was promoted as starring some of the NOW Comics characters, such as The Real Ghostbusters. The advertisements never specified what exactly was in the film or how the characters were involved (they "appeared" though the brief use of clips from their television series). Cast With the exception of a few actors, all of the NOW Comics staff appear as themselves. *Jim Vincent (portrays Mel Mudd) *Tony Caputo (staff publisher) *Marc Hansen (staff writer) *Katherine Llewllyn (staff editor) *Brian Thomas (staff penciler) *Patrick Williams (staff letterer) *Jim Brozman (staff inker) *Suzanne Dechnik (staff colorist) *Michele Mach (staff art director) *Holly Sanfelippo (portrays They're Back Girl) *Tammy Daniel (staff member) *Joseph Allen (staff member) *Diane Piron (staff member) *Shalimar (portrays The Belly Dancer) *John Halle (portrays The Diner Owner) *Robert Norton (portrays Sniffles) Plot All of the NOW Comics characters are missing and pranks have been pulled on the NOW staff to prevent them from doing their jobs. "Comic Book Detective" Mel Mudd has been hired by Tony Caputo, the head of NOW Comics, to help solve the mystery of who is trying to ruin the company. As he interrogates the staff (all of whom play themselves), we learn how comic books are made. List of Ghostbusters-Related Footage The list below (with timecodes) may make it appear that there's lot of Ghostbusters footage in the film, but it's really just quick shots. It you add it all up, you'd be lucky to get five minutes total. Also, nobody actually works on The Real Ghostbusters & Slimer! comics in the film itself. All of the footage is shown to illustrate the processes and techniques that the artists are telling Mel Mudd about. Think of them as flashbacks, or pre-recorded footage at least. 04:51 - Tony leafs through the Slimer trade paperback. 05:42 - Suzanne Dechnik(?) says "My desk has been totally trashed, and The Real Ghostbusters are all slimed." 07:16 - Katie Llewellyn (editor) has the Slimer #2 comic on her desk. 23:41 - There's a GB2 movie poster on the wall of Brian Thomas' (penciler) office. 24:21 - Close-up of a Slimer or RGB script. 24:26 - Pencil drawings of the script(?). 24:43 - Brian drawing the above, Slimer toy on his work desk. 25:37 - Close-up of a panel in the pencil drawing. 25:40 - Close-up of a few panels in the pencil drawing. 25:54 - Brian again drawing the pencil sketch. 26:39 - More of Brian drawing, with the RGB opening sequence playing over it ala "picture in picture". 26:48 - Great close-up of RGB art, goes from black & white to color as it pans down. 29:04 - Letterer Patrick Williams works on a RGB or Slimer (?) comic, putting in the rough lines. 29:29 - Patrick puts in the words. 30:15 - Patrick adds in the sound effect words, "Slurp" for the Slimer! story "Slimer Takes The Cake" from issue #17. 30:20 - An entire view of the art he's working on. 30:27 - A close-up of Patrick inking "Slurp". 30:31 - Now he's inking the though bubbles. 30:36 - Inking the borders and page numbers. 30:48 - Inking the main title, starts close-up then zooms out. 33:13 - The GB2 Advance poster hanging on the wall of Jim Brozman's (inker) office. 33:35 - Jim inking Egon in a RGB comic. 33:58 - A close-up of Jim inking Egon. 34:14 - More inking, this time on the panel above Egon of a curly-mustached man. 34:31 - A close-up of the above. 34:52 - Large fingerprints on the black & white inked artwork for the cover of RGB #23. The fingerprints are part of the plot of this film. 35:43 - Colorist Suzanne Dechnik working on a Slimer! comic, close-up of flames. 36:16 - Suzanne matching up the colors in the art to a color chart, the "mechanical coloring" method. Here's Suzanne to tell you how that works: "Well it's the colorists job to bring life to the comics, and we do this in two ways: the easy way and the hard way. The easy way is mechanical coloring. What we do is we shoot the original down to comic book size on a Xerox machine, and we take markers, color it in, and we match the marker colors to a color coded sheet that the separator... by a lame bit in which Mel asks Suzanne for her sandwich ...We match it up to a chart that the separator gives us. And this gives the work a very flat look. The colors are very bright, and so we use it for our kids books, like Slimer and Speed Racer and things like that." 36:21 - The cover of Slimer! #9 and the first page of the "Cool Slime" story from Slimer! #8. 36:44 - Close-up of blue-lined panel art, using the "full painting" method for another Slimer! comic. 36:52 - A full shot of above, with all of the panels showing. A frisket (clear sheet of plastic) is layed over the art. 37:01 - A close-up of more blue-lined Slimer! art with one panel slightly colored, pans from the blue-only art to part of the colored art. 37:04 - Airbrushing of the Slimer! art, close-up of airbrush pans down to close-up of the art being colored. 37:14 - Close-up of airbrushed art being cut. 37:17 - Another close-up with Slimer's mouth being painted. 41:29 - The separator putting the colors into an RGB comic, the final film image is shown. 41:32 - Blue RGB art, zooms out from extreme close-up of the tiny dots that make up the image. 41:38 - Same as above but in color, zooms out from extreme close-up of the tiny dots that make up the image. 41:57 - Yellow version of RGB comic page. 42:01 - Yellow & red version of RGB comic page. 42:04 - More color added, then a plastic sheet is layed over the art, thus providing the final colors and words. 42:16 - Various NOW Comic covers, including RGB #1 and RGB #17 (middle bottom, covered by Speed Racer and Fright Night). 56:56 - All of the NOW Comics characters are returning to "work" (yea!). Footage from the RGB opening sequence is used to show the RGB coming back: zoom in on the firehouse doors with Ecto-1 racing out, cut to all four RGB pulling their neutrona wands ready for action. 57:03 - Now Slimer returns to NOW, with more RGB opening sequence footage (of course): Slimer kissing Janine, then riding on top of Ecto-1. 57:13 - A couple quick shots of a RGB comic page featuring Janine going through the entire comic-making process from rough pencil sketches to final colored art. This is followed by RGB comic work shots that were shown earlier in the film. Trivia *Issue #17 of the Slimer comic book series contains an advertisement for a "Mel Mudd, Comic Book Detective" comic book. It's very likely that the book was never published since there's no other record of it anywhere else.http://ghostbusters.wikia.com/wiki/File:Mel_Mudd_Comic_Ad_in_Slimer_17.jpg Unreleased DVD Version The movie was supposed to be released on DVD for $19.95 in October 2004 under the new title "Mel Mudd, The Comic Book Detective" (ISBN 0-9745205-5-1). It was intended to be updated, re-edited, and re-mastered; and it was going to bundled with a new "Mel Mudd, The Comic Book Detective" comic book written by Jeff Kapalka and illustrated by Gordon Morrison. Special Features were to include an interview with the music composer, actor Jim Vincent (who played Mel Mudd), and a behind the scenes view of the production. It was going to be available from the now-defunct Store page on the NOW Comics website, but for unknown reasons, it was never released.http://web.archive.org/web/20040808215710/http://www.nowcomics.com/shopnow.asp#dvd Paul Rudoff of Spook Central (Fan Site) e-mailed Tony Caputo about the DVD before the scheduled release date, and afterward, to gather more information about it. Those e-mails have been formatted into the following brief Q&A, with the dates of his e-mail replies in parenthesis after his answers. (All of this information originally appeared on Spook Central, but has since been deleted. It is being republished on this Wiki by Paul Rudoff.) Q: Why did you change the name? A: I changed the name to Mel Mudd, The Comic Book Detective to make it more general and outside of NOW Comics, although NOW is still featured, it's still an old NOW. (Mon, 16 Aug 2004 00:42:04 -0500) Q: Will the DVD only be for sale on your site or will I be able to also buy from Amazon.com and offline stores? A: It'll be available online, comic shops, blockbusters and bookstores. (Mon, 16 Aug 2004 16:57:02 -0500) Q: Was the Mel Mudd DVD released yet? It was supposed to come out in October 2004, and that's now two months ago. A: The Mel Mudd DVD has been delayed. There's some TV stuff brewing for it, so I'm seeing what happens first. (Mon, 06 Dec 2004 02:34:47 -0600) Below is the DVD press release that Tony sent to Paul when the DVD was still scheduled to be released. Credits To see credits click "Show". Executive Producers Alan Lusk Tony Caputo Producer Thomas O'Keefe Director Frank Kostka Editor Mark R. Jepsen Screenplay by William Cimino Thomas O'Keefe Original Music by David Injeski Creative Consultant Nanette Injeski Associate Producer Lisa Calderaro Production Crew Tony Chidichimo Parker Williams Robert Busch Jill Silvestri Thor Jepsen Production Secretary Teresa Vepez Special Thanks To: Maxwell Communications, St. Cloud, Minn. G&S Lithographers, Chicago, Ill. Salt & Pepper Diner, Chicago, Ill. Lester Borden Ellie Padell Steve Murphy Lynne Cramer Walt Injeski Babe Injeski Kirk S. Bennett Nancy Craig Mike Mulvihill Steve Diamond John McSweeney "The What Now Caper" Theme Sung by: Gary Stewart Ghostbusters Animation courtesy of Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. Speed Racer Animation courtesy of Color Systems Technology, Inc. Fright Night is TM & copyright 1989 Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. Fright Night II is copyright 1989 Vista Organization. For licensing information contact Columbia Pictures Merchandising, New York. The Real Ghostbusters and Slimer are TM & copyright 1984 Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. Copyright 1986 Columbia Pictures Television, a division of CPT Holdings, Inc. Ghostbusters logo and logo design are licensed trademarks from Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. For licensing information contact Columbia Pictures Merchandising, New York. The Green Hornet is TM & copyright 1980, The Green Hornet, Inc. For licensing information contact Leisure Concepts, Inc., New York. Speed Racer, Racer X and all other characters from the Speed Racer cartoon are TM & copyright 1989 Trustees of General Electric Pension Trust and copyright 1989 Tatsunko Productions, Co, LTD. Ralph Snart Adventures and all other characters in association with the comic book are TM & copyright 1986, 1987, 1988, Marc Hansen. For licensing information, contact NOW Comics, Chicago. Little Monsters and all characters in association with the film is TM & copyright 1989 Vestron Pictures, Inc. Distributed by MGM/UA Distribution Co. Mel Mudd is TM & Copyright 1989 City Video Productions, Inc. and NOW Comics (a division of Caputo Publishing, Inc.) Program content, artwork and photography, unless otherwise indicated, Copyright MCMLXXXIX City Video Productions, Inc. and NOW Comics (a division of Caputo Publishing, Inc.) External Links * Internet Movie Database Trailer Links *Streaming (Facebook) *Streaming (Facebook) *Streaming (Youtube) *Streaming (RetroJunk) (watermarked) *Windows Media (640x480, 22.5 Mb) (Internet Archive) *Quicktime (320x240, 4.3 Mb) (Internet Archive) Entire Movie Links *Streaming (Facebook) *Streaming (Facebook) *Streaming (Youtube) See also *NOW Comics- The Real Ghostbusters Series *NOW Comics- Slimer! Series References Gallery Packaging whatnowcaper_vhs1.jpg|VHS Box Front Whatnowcaper_vhs2.png|VHS Box Front & Spine Whatnowcaper_vhs3.png|VHS Box Back Whatnowcaper_vhs4.png|VHS Tape Promotional what_now_caper_ad_in_rgb_v1_no17.jpg|Ad that first appeared in Real GB comic #17 what_now_caper_ad_in_rgb_v1_no18.jpg|Ad that first appeared in Real GB comic #18 Mel_Mudd_Comic_Ad_in_Slimer_17.jpg|Mel Mudd Comic Ad in Slimer comic #17 what_now_caper_on_now_what_magazine_v1_no5.jpg|Cover of Now What! Magazine #5 Screenshots whatnowcaper00.jpg whatnowcaper01.jpg whatnowcaper02.jpg whatnowcaper03.jpg whatnowcaper04.jpg whatnowcaper05.jpg whatnowcaper06.jpg whatnowcaper07.jpg whatnowcaper08.jpg whatnowcaper09.jpg whatnowcaper10.jpg whatnowcaper11.jpg whatnowcaper12.jpg whatnowcaper13.jpg whatnowcaper14.jpg whatnowcaper15.jpg whatnowcaper16.jpg whatnowcaper17.jpg whatnowcaper18.jpg whatnowcaper19.jpg whatnowcaper20.jpg whatnowcaper21.jpg whatnowcaper22.jpg whatnowcaper23.jpg whatnowcaper24.jpg whatnowcaper25.jpg whatnowcaper26.jpg whatnowcaper27.jpg whatnowcaper28.jpg whatnowcaper29.jpg whatnowcaper30.jpg whatnowcaper31.jpg whatnowcaper32.jpg whatnowcaper33.jpg whatnowcaper34.jpg whatnowcaper35.jpg whatnowcaper36.jpg whatnowcaper37.jpg whatnowcaper38.jpg whatnowcaper39.jpg whatnowcaper40.jpg whatnowcaper41.jpg whatnowcaper42.jpg whatnowcaper43.jpg whatnowcaper44.jpg whatnowcaper45.jpg whatnowcaper46.jpg whatnowcaper47.jpg whatnowcaper48.jpg whatnowcaper49.jpg whatnowcaper50.jpg whatnowcaper51.jpg whatnowcaper52.jpg whatnowcaper53.jpg whatnowcaper54.jpg whatnowcaper55.jpg whatnowcaper56.jpg whatnowcaper57.jpg whatnowcaper58.jpg whatnowcaper59.jpg whatnowcaper60.jpg Category:The Real Ghostbusters NOW Comics Category:Slimer! NOW Comics Category:Cameos